The personal site of Tom Coates, co-founder of Product Club

Watchblog.com
A beautifully designed site which explores the 2004 US election across three weblogging panes, reflecting Democrat, Republican and Third-party contenders. It’s an interesting idea and elegantly assembled.

Bloggers Rate the Most Influential Blogs
“So here we go again. This column is an attempt to show which Weblogs are influencing the media the most. That’s really a vague idea, but that gives me latitude to be wrong just enough to bring your catcalls and counterarguments (please click the “Speak Up” button to the left). “

Lance Arthur’s New Site
Lance is back – finally. The creator of Glassdog.com and about a million cool other things finally looks like he’s got a … well I’m not going to call it a weblog because he’ll probably stab me.

A Blogger’s Big Fish Fantasy
The New York Times retreads the old, “They’re in it for the traffic” angle on weblogs – writing an article that’s both true and a little frustrating, as it concentrates mainly on people who are pursuing active strategies to get more traffic, rather than letting their site reflect them as people.

Microsoft forming a policy on internal weblogs
Interesting one this – I’ve worked for a number of companies while updating this site – some have been more comfortable about my personal publishing enterprise than others. Through all that time though I’ve tried to never talk about specific decisions or ideas ongoing at work unless it was both in my interest and my company’s. But who gets to decide? Individual’s becoming known for their insights is brilliant for them, and reflects well on a company that employs them. Openness breeds creativity. But where’s the line between being open and engaging with a community and costing your company large amounts of money… I think it remains unclear, and Microsoft’s stance on this could determine a standard corporate policy that’s employed elsewhere. Worth watching, this one…